Chinese telecom equipment and ICT solutions provider ZTE (News - Alert) has been selected by Telekom Austria Group to deploy a mobile circuit switched (CS) VoIP switch and IP Multimedia System (IMS) converged voice network.

For this project, ZTE has partnered with Kapsch Carrier Com (KCC) and a local system integrator.

The softswitch network will replace Telekom Austria’s (News - Alert) existing mobile core network in its northern operational districts which include Austria, Slovenia and Liechtenstein. The agreement also calls for the deployment of a new IMS network in these branches.

"The new ZTE CS/IMS network opens up the future for Telekom Austria Group (News - Alert)," said Hans Pichler, CTO of Telekom Austria Group, in a statement. "It will enable us to easily expand our business while giving our customers the best possible experience of the latest fixed and mobile communication services."

Telekom Austria Group will benefit from the converged voice solutions delivered via cloud. The solution will reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) at Telekom Austria Group. Further, the centralized IMS core will be deployed to serve various branches independently helping the group launch new services rapidly while gaining centralized management and control of its networks.

In addition, the IMS core network will support advanced capabilities such as Rich Communication Suite (News - Alert)-enhanced (RCSe) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE).

RCSe will enable the group to better deal with the threats coming from Internet-based OTT providers. With RCSe, Telekom Austria Group can deliver a carrier-class multimedia experience to users while VoLTE will enable full convergence of the operator’s fixed and mobile networks.

"We are honored to deploy a future-proof mobile voice and broadband multimedia service network for Telekom Austria Group, bringing fresh experiences to users and enabling the Group to strengthen its lead in different markets," said Xu Ziyang (News - Alert), vice president of ZTE, in a statement.